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Key to All MythologiesEp. 61: Dante, Purgatorio, Cantos 16 – 18.
Why does the discourse on love begin with the words of a minor character, Marco of Lombardy, rather than Virgil?
Are Virgil’s discourses on love and free will more Augustinian or Aristotelian?
Is love the only thing in the cosmos that does not diminish as it is shared? Light?
What does it mean to say God is Love? Is God love?
Is Virgil’s schematic approach to these questions an example of the limits of human reason? Is faith what is missing?
Is Dante the poet critiquing Virgil, or are we critiquing Dante?
Even if you clai...
2023-11-151h 23Key to All MythologiesEp. 60: Dante, Purgatorio, Cantos 13 – 15.Some questions discussed in this episode:
Can love undo the damage inflicted – to the self and the the community – by envy?
Is there a Golden Mean between vice and virtue?
Just how Aristotelian was Dante anyway?
How does the kind of person you are change the things you can (and cannot) see?
What is the distinction between truth and fact?
What does Dante means when he speaks of art as an “error” that is not false?
2023-10-161h 02Key to All MythologiesEp. 59: Dante, Purgatorio, Cantos 10 – 12.Some questions discussed in this episode:
What role does art have to play in the transformation of vice into virtue?
What is the connection, if there is one, between the soul of the artist and the beauty of what they create?
If virtue is properly presented by the artist, will it always be attractive, and vice always disgusting, to the audience?
Why is this the where Dante worries the reader might fall away? Why is this an especially dangerous moment for Dante’s vision of the unity of divine justice?
Why is the dominant metaphors in theses cantos ec...
2023-10-021h 11Key to All MythologiesEp. 58: Dante, Purgatorio, Cantos 7 – 9.
We are now through Cato’s gate, and into the antechamber, the incorporeal coat-room, the final stage before Purgatory proper. Dante moves among the penitents as they receive their just punishments, and serve their allotted waiting times, before they can slowly make their way up the mountain, and eventually to Heaven. We discuss the delicate interplay of light and darkness, of faith in the unseen and clarity of vision, and of certainty and doubt, which this painstaking crawl of redemption inspires. Bonus thoughts: We also think about what role beauty plays in religious art.
2023-09-211h 17Key to All MythologiesEp. 57: Dante, Purgatorio, Cantos 4 – 6
We continue our climb up the mountain of Purgatory. Canto Four begins with a consideration of the meaning of prayer for the process of purgation. God, we are told, cannot hear the prayers of those passing through Purgatory, but their time on the mountain can be shortened by the prayers of the living. We discuss this rather strange piece of doctrine. Given what we learned in Hell about the very precise nature of divine justice, doesn’t this violate or circumvent it somehow? Or is this an argument for the God-granted power of the human mind, and th...
2023-04-121h 29Key to All MythologiesEp. 56: Dante, Purgatorio, Cantos 1 – 3.We join Dante and Virgil as they begin their climb up the mountain of Purgatory. Why is Cato, a pagan who lived before Christ and died by suicide, the honored guardian of that mountain? Does he have access to Heaven? If so, why only him and no other “virtuous pagans” (including Virgil)? We also reflect on the tragedy and meaning of Virgil’s fate, and what this fate might say about his supposed status as the Divine Comedy’s embodiment of human reason. Finally, we talk about Dante’s larger plan for the Comedy. What is his grand vision of Christi...
2023-02-011h 08Key to All MythologiesEp. 55: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans.), “Inferno,” Cantos 31 – 34.We arrive at the end of the Inferno, where Satan is frozen in a lake of ice. Dante’s Satan is a mechanistic creature, seemingly without agency, personality, or voice. His main function is to sit at the center of Hell, the lowest point in Dante’s hierarchical universe, where the flapping of his six wings freezes the landscape around him, and to allow Dante and Virgil to use his body as a ladder to climb up and out of Hell.
He is, to say the least, not charming, duplicitous, playful, or mocking. The most life-like thing abou...
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Key to All MythologiesEp. 54: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans.), “Inferno,” Cantos 28 – 30.We are now deep in Hell. Two of the sinners we encounter in canto 29 introduce a new wrinkle to the poem’s psychology. They seem to have some degree of self-knowledge about the justice of their punishment, or at least they refer to their own punishment as fitting. What does it mean to have self-knowledge post-damnation? It can’t be that sinner’s learn once condemned to Hell, can it? Is total self-knowledge equivalent to a complete severing from God’s being? Why is forgery a sin punished so deep in the pit? And why is it’s contrapasso that the f...
2022-12-141h 18Key to All MythologiesEp. 53: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans,), “Inferno,” Cantos 25 – 27.Today we discuss Dante and Virgil’s encounter with Ulysses. The Greek hero gives a cavalier and almost rousing account of himself, spit from the flames eternally consuming him deep in the pits of Hell. Dante’s Ulysses recounts himself extending his famous wanderings beyond Ithaca, and out to the edge of the world, where God sends a whirlwind to destroy him and his ships. Of his wanderlust he says “not tenderness for a son, nor filial duty towards my aged father, nor the love I owed Penelope, that would have made her glad, could overcome the fervor that was mi...
2022-11-181h 09Key to All MythologiesEp. 52: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans.), “Inferno,” Cantos 22 – 24.Today we take up a set of thorny questions surrounding the punishment of hypocrites in the 8th circle of the Inferno. What forms of corruption pollute the human spirit and the human community in especially damaging ways? What are the implications of the ease with which the demons in this circle trick Virgil, supposedly the embodiment of human reason? We also consider the meaning of a strange episode where one of the damned plots to briefly escape from his torments by fleeing the pitchforks of the demons who surround him. Is there playfulness in Hell? The sinners throughout the...
2022-11-121h 23Key to All MythologiesEp. 51: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans.), “Inferno,” Cantos 19-21.Simoniacs, sorcerers , barrators, and their just and fiery punishments. Are their punishments just? And should we rejoice in the punishments of those who are being justly punished? Does it seem that sorcerers are having a worse time of it than the other two categories? Why? Because they aspired to god-like powers? Ah, but who is more impious than one who thinks God shows partiality in His judgements? Puzzlements abound once again. Give it a listen.
2022-10-181h 18Key to All MythologiesEp. 50: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans.), “Inferno,” Cantos 16-18.Cantos 16, 17, and 18 revolve around interactions with violent sinners from the recent political conflicts in Florence, Dante’s home city, and the city from which he was permanently exiled, shortly before he began work on the Comedy. What is the purpose of a poem aspiring to universality being laced with references to particular, local people – people who would have been long forgotten had they not appeared in Dante’s poem (as opposed to say, Greek mythic heroes, or Caesars). Why does Hell have such a political quality – especially given how central and inescapable politics is to human life and human goodness...
2022-08-251h 19Key to All MythologiesEp. 49: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans.), “Inferno,” Cantos 13-15.[Special note: The Episode covering Cantos 10, 11, and 12 was lost to history and the fires of Hell/Zoom].
Friends, a periodic warning. This podcast is not about summary, nor content, nor entertainment, nor facts. This podcast aims for aporia. That is, we aim to begin in uncertainty, and to end in paradox, silence, and doubt. And, if nothing else, these aims at least we achieve…. Today we are discussing Cantos 13, 14, and 15 of Dante’s and Virgil’s continuing descent into Hell. This turns out to be an especially dense reading, covering many thorny topics. What is the difference betwee...
2022-08-251h 08Key to All MythologiesEp. 48: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans.), “Inferno,” Cantos 7-9.In these Cantos Dante continues his journey deeper into Hell, guided by Virgil. They cross the river Styx, where the shades of the wrathful are boiling, and descend into the city of Dis, within which much of the rest of the Inferno will take place. What kind of character is Dante the pilgrim? Is he a hero? A Christian hero? Can a hero need a guide who babies, protects, and reassures him the way Virgil does for Dante? Can a Christian hero revel in the suffering of sinners of the damned in hell, the way Dante does in Canto 7?
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Key to All MythologiesEp. 47: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans.), “Inferno,” Cantos 4 – 6.Today we continue our journey into Hell, discussing cantos 4-6 of Dante’s Inferno. Canto 5 contains one of the most famous monologues in the Inferno, where the Italian countess Francesca da Rimini relates the tale of lust, woe, Romance literature, and murder that ends with her eternal punishment. Her story raises a host of interesting questions about love, free will, passion, reason, and rhetorical persuasion. We spend a good bit of time discussing these thorny problems. However, we begin with Dante’s encounter with the great poets in Limbo, a grey field that is not quite Hell, but is none...
2022-06-071h 19Key to All MythologiesEp. 46: Dante’s Divine Comedy (Hollander trans.), “Inferno,” Cantos 1 – 3.We begin our epic journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven, accompanied by Dante the poet, Dante the character created by the poet Dante, with Virgil our guide, and Beatrice our semi-divine benefactor. We spend most of our conversation today trying to orient ourselves in our strange new world. Why was Dante chosen by divine grace to be the one living soul to pass through Hell – and why is Virgil, of all the honored names of the pre-Christian past, his guide? Are the primary goals of this poem theological, aesthetic, ethical, or otherwise? Can such categories even be separated for a...
2022-05-201h 28Key to All MythologiesEp. 45: Aristotle’s On the Soul (Sachs trans.), Book III, pt. 2We finish Aristotle’s On the Soul, where, near the end of Book III, Aristotle claims, possibly, that there is, maybe, something of the soul, perhaps, which persists beyond death, in theory, and what persists of the soul might be thinking, potentially, or have something to do with thinking, or so they say. Can you think a thing in its being without recourse to any symbols? What kind of thought would this be? If something of the mind is indeed deathless, yet that deathless part is also not imagination, nor will, nor anything to do with language, nor body, no...
2022-05-041h 30Key to All MythologiesEp. 44: Aristotle’s On the Soul (Sachs trans.), Book III, pt. 1.If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, is it being at work sounding, despite the absence of one who is being at work hearing? The answer, obviously, is yes. And the answer is also no. This is Aristotle, after all. Join us as we discuss the Master of Those Who Know on the two-fold nature of hearing and seeing, the perils of explaining how you know that you know without getting caught in an infinite regress, complex relationships the qualities of which are not contained in their component parts, and many...
2022-04-271h 26Key to All MythologiesEp. 43: Aristotle’s On the Soul (Sachs trans.), Book II, pt. 2Another over-stuffed, stimulating conversation on this very captivating, very ancient, shockingly modern text. We first discuss how Aristotle thinks about the relationship between teaching and learning, in light of his claim that the thinking soul is not properly altered (that is, moved) while being taught how to think. It’s quite a puzzle! About half-way through we transition to a fascinating conversation about the value of reading “outdated” or “disproved” scientific texts. Can such texts have more than a purely historical interest? Is Aristotle truly outdated? Or does he give us a method for using observation to consider problems that are b...
2022-04-181h 27Key to All MythologiesEp. 42: Aristotle’s On the Soul (Sachs trans.), Book II, chapters 1 – 3.This is, no doubt, a dense and difficult text, where a lot of deep insights are packed into Aristotle’s short arguments. Our conversation is correspondingly slow and careful, but stick with us and you’ll be rewarded with a sense of Aristotle’s surprisingly fresh way of looking at motion, life, and the world of the senses, which is neither materialist nor spiritual, but something of a third way that avoids the paradoxes of those two extremes.
2022-03-301h 07Key to All MythologiesEp. 41: Aristotle’s On the Soul (Joe Sachs translation), Book I.Here are the opening lines of today’s reading, which we parse in great detail: “Since we consider knowledge to be something beautiful and honored, and one sort more so than another, either on account of its precision or because it is about better and more wondrous things, on both these accounts we should with good reason rank the inquiry about the soul among the primary studies. And it seems that acquaintance with it contributes greatly toward all truth and especially toward the truth about nature, since the soul is in some way the governing source of all living thin...
2022-03-1559 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 40: Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear it Away, pg. 203 – end.The novel concludes with a shocking act of sexual violence against young Tarwater, which propels him back to his home at Powderhead, and back to the grave of old Tarwater. Here, at last, he hears the voice of God speak within him, and he accepts his destiny as prophet of the Lord. The last we see of Tarwater is as he makes his way once again toward the dark city, “where the children of God lay sleeping.”
Why was such an act required for Tarwater to accept his fate? Is this book realistic? Or more like a fabl...
2022-02-281h 24Key to All MythologiesEp. 39: Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear it Away, pg. 148 – 202.This week we are discussing the end of part two, in which the novel confronts us, yet again, with the problem of freedom. Specifically the problem of freedom within the context of a Christian cosmology. Can anyone be said to be free and responsible for their actions, and if so where does that freedom lie? After all, we all have subconscious desires acting in us, we all have dispositions we didn’t choose, we have the limits put on us by our time and place, and we have the voices of ancestors hectoring us in our heads. Nevertheless the ev...
2022-02-211h 30Key to All MythologiesEp. 38: Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear it Away, pg. 97 – 147.Sometimes, perhaps, it feels to us as if there is meaning in human life, as if our suffering can be redeemed, as if God and the Devil are locked in an eternal struggle for our souls. Other times, it feels to us as if there is no meaning, as if nature and fate are indifferent to our suffering and nothing about it can be redeemed, as if God and the Devil are childish images leftover from our ignorant ancestors.
This week we discuss the second half of part two of Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear it A...
2022-01-241h 12Key to All MythologiesEp. 37: Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear It Away, pg. 53 – 93.What is the place of true silence in human life? Not merely quiet, or even deafness, but the silence which strands you alone with the inner voice, that still, small voice we so often want to ignore, overwhelm, and obliterate. What is the meaning of that voice? And why do we seem so afraid to confront it? We take up these questions on our second of five episodes discussing Flannery O’Connor’s novel The Violent Bear it Away.
For this episode we read the second half of part one, which continues the story of young Francis Tarw...
2022-01-051h 18Key to All MythologiesEp. 36: Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear It Away, pg. 1 – 52.Francis Tarwater is a teenage boy who has been raised in near-isolation by his great uncle Mason Tarwater somewhere in deepest backwaters of the American South. The elder Tarwater has been preparing the boy to be a prophet of God, in the line of Old Testament prophets like Jonah, Daniel, and Elijah, but Tarwater reacts to his great-uncles death by first getting drunk, and second by burning down their old farmhouse, called Powderhead, with, as far as he knows, old Tarwater's body still inside, unburied, in defiance of the old man’s most consistent demand – that the boy bury him...
2021-12-221h 14Key to All MythologiesEp. 35: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book XV (trans. Rolfe Humphries).After 14 books and more than 15,000 lines of poetry, we have reached the final book of Ovid’s epic, the Metamorphoses. And in the final book we encounter the philosopher Pythagoras, who has the longest and most unusual soliloquy in a poem that has been filled with them. Pythagoras’ vision of reality seems to resemble closely Ovid’s himself: a world of constant change, in which nothing, neither body, nor city, nor meaning, stays fixed for long. Yet, as we consider the words of Pythagoras, gaps between his account and Ovid’s poetry appear, making it obvious that this is not a si...
2021-12-101h 26Key to All MythologiesEp. 34: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book XIV (trans. Rolfe Humphries).This book completes the story of Aeneas, as he ventures into the underworld, guided by Sybil. Returning to the human world, Sybil tells Aeneas that she is cursed to age at the normal pace, but not to die – until she eventually becomes only a disembodied voice. Early Roman history begins in book 14, with some of Rome’s founding myths, including the deification of Aeneas. Book 14 also relates the especially obscure story of Pomona, the goddess of gardens, and Vertumnus, the god of plants, and his protean, shape-shifting attempts to woo (or seduce, or rape) her. What is the role of t...
2021-11-291h 00Key to All MythologiesEp. 33: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book XIII (trans. Rolfe Humphries).Book 13 features monologues from heroes like Ulysses and Ajax, from queens and nymphs like Galatea, and monsters, like Polyphemus. All in all, this book is a potent reminder that human speech has been the primary vehicle driving the action in the Metamorphoses. Polyphemus is an especially interesting case because instead of appearing as a monstrous, shadowy presence on the edge of the world, eating Greeks and bashing ships, he has his own real character, expressed through his (somewhat, possibly) charming song attempting to win the heart of Galatea. While still obviously lacking the rhetorical polish of Ulysses, there can...
2021-11-221h 04Key to All MythologiesEp. 32: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book XI (trans. Rolfe Humphries).On this episode we are reading Book 11 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Book 11 opens with the grisly dismemberment of Orpheus, whose severed head floats down the Hebrus River, the waters causing his mouth to still murmur his sad songs mourning the loss of his wife Eurydice, as if the earth itself were mourning for him (or with him). This book also relates the famous story of Midas and his ill-fated wish to turn all he touched to gold, and of the violent king Daedelion, transformed into an equally violent bird. The book ends with the long, tormented soliloquy of queen Al...
2021-11-101h 17Key to All MythologiesEp. 31: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book X (trans. Rolfe Humphries).Book Ten begins with the familiar story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus, famous bard, uses his songs to re-claim his new bride Eurydice from the Underworld, only to lose her to death once again when he looks back at her too early as they are leaving the land of the dead. The rest of the book is a series of stories told by Orpheus to illustrate, perhaps, the dangers of marriage, and what a world without marriage would be like. Better or worse? We spent most of our time thinking through this question, using the story of Pygmalion, deluded...
2021-10-271h 10Key to All MythologiesEp. 30: The Fall of Rome by W.H. AudenOn this bonus episode of the Key, we have a very off-the-cuff, very free-ranging discussion of Auden’s short poem “The Fall of Rome,” which you can listen to the man himself reading in his great, mid-century baritone here. (Or you can listen to us read it in our nasally, 21st century rasp to start the episode, but it is not as impressive). What is the fall of Rome, as Auden chronicles it? Something that actually happened in history? Something that is happening to the West now? Or something that is always happening – some part of civilization falling away, as anoth...
2021-10-1942 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 29: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book IX (trans. Rolfe Humphries)Hercules takes center stage in book nine, but we spend most of our time discussing the story of Byblis, who pines for her brother Caunas. Byblis has a long monologue where she weighs the pros and cons of confessing her feelings to her brother, eventually deciding to write them out on a tablet, which Caunas then reads and hurls angrily aside. Byblis, sick with the rejection, is eventually transformed into a fountain. We consider the difference between writing and speaking as means of communication, and the role of writing in the Metamorphoses. Could Byblis have confessed if her only...
2021-09-301h 10Key to All MythologiesEp. 28: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VIII (trans. Rolfe Humphries)We begin and end with a consideration of the myth of Erysichthon. Herein Erysichthon, a man with no reverence for the gods, mutilates the sacred grove of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. His punishment is to be cursed by Famine, so that no matter how much he consumes, he is never full. His final act, after eating whole forests and rivers, among other things, is to eat himself. For such a rich symbol and story, Erysichthon is almost unknown, compared to figures like Narcissus and Echo, who are features of everyday speech and thought. We try to think through...
2021-09-2257 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 27: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VII (trans. Rolfe Humphries)In this episode we mainly discuss two complicated love stories: Jason & Medea, and Cephalus & Procris. Both these stories begin with happiness for the lovers, but end with madness, violence, and death. What does this say about the place of love in the Metamorphoses? The overwhelming power of desire is a constant in this poem, but those possessed by desire rarely (never?) come to good ends. There is a sensuousness and a romantic quality to the poetry in the Metamorphoses, but the arcs of the individual characters often involved them being punished, somehow, for their pursuit of their beloveds? Love...
2021-09-151h 06Key to All MythologiesEp. 26: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI (trans. Rolfe Humphries)Book VI contains three stories of horrific violence, each somehow more horrific than the last. First, the goddess Athena beats Arachne almost to death with a weaving tool, then transforms her into a spider. Them, Niobe’s 14 children are systemically murdered by Apollo and Artemis. Finally, most horribly of all, Tereus rapes and mutilates Philomela, sister to his wife Procne; whereupon Procne murders their son and feeds him to his father Tereus in a stew. As unpleasent as these stories are, they were all common tales in the world of Greek mythology. How does Ovid use them? By bringing ou...
2021-08-3052 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 25: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book V (trans. Rolfe Humphries)In Book V the narrative veers away from Bacchus and tells the story of Perseus, who escapes an angry mob by using the head of Medusa to turn them all to stone. Then we fly with Minerva to visit the Muses, who relate the tale of the human sisters who challenged them to a story-telling contest, lost, and were transformed into magpies as punishment. Is there any connection between all these events? Or are we listening to some elevated version of bar-talk, where one rambling story segues into the next with only the loosest symbolic or emotional attachment? This...
2021-08-2458 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 24: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book IV (trans. Rolfe Humphries)We continue to discuss the meaning of the worship of Bacchus among the women of Thebes. The few women who hold out against the new cult are punished for their impertinence by being transformed into bats. What about the stories they tell merits the punishment they receive? Is the Bacchanalian revelry about sexual desire, a more literal desire to possess or merge with another being, chaos overtaking order, an illustration of the fear Rome felt at the possibility of women liberated from household chores, or something else altogether? We also spend some time discussing the central importance of speech...
2021-08-1958 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 23: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book III (trans. Rolfe Humphries)Book III contains the story of Narcissus, the beautiful boy who falls in love with own reflection, and then drowns himself because he will never be able to possess the object of his desire. This is easily the most famous image from the entire Metamorphoses. We spend almost no time discussing it. Instead we spend most of the hour discussing the arrival of the “new god” Bacchus. Even in a book about transformation and chance, a new god is unusual. What is the meaning of Bacchus, the beautiful boy who shambles about drunk on wine and transforms sailors into dolp...
2021-08-091h 05Key to All MythologiesEp. 22: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book II (trans. Rolfe Humphries)We again consider the question of Jove and his behavior. Sometimes he behaves like a great and noble king, other times like a petulant child, and other times like an unrepentant rapist and criminal. What are we to make of this? Do Jove’s actions have any special moral meaning, or are they simply one more example of a world where everything, very much including morality, is always shifting and uncertain? We also spend a fair bit of time discussing the character of Envy and her meaning in the poem. Why, of all the rape and violence depicted so fa...
2021-08-0257 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 21: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book I (translated by Rolfe Humphries)We start by trying to establish the terms of the moral universe Ovid depicts. Are the gods meant to be figures of ridicule? Does Ovid take them seriously at all? Are the linked vignettes which comprise the Metamorphoses, for the most part, meant to have the qualities of fables? Lessons? Horror movies? Jokes? Jove brought change and decay into the world by the introduction of seasons. Does this poem, which is after all a poem of change, transformation, and decay, praise him for this or vilify him? Or does Ovid simply report on a world he finds ludicrous, laughable...
2021-07-2646 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 20: Vergil’s Georgics, Books III and IVWe wrap up our discussion of the Georgics with a lot of talk about the meaning of bees, bee-keeping, and the fact that bees sleep very peacefully at night because they do not have sex. How does this relate to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice? If all your bees die at once, say of the plague, will slaughtering a bull bring them back? Are horse-flies a punishment for excessive human acquisitiveness? Do your humble pod-casters, who are not farmers, in addition to all the other things they are not, illuminate any of this fabulous poem’s mysteries, or do...
2021-07-2055 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 19: Vergil’s Georgics, Books I and IIHere we begin our two part digression into the Georgics of Vergil. We consider the meaning of the implicit contrast Vergil draws between the solitary life of the farmer and the hectic life of the citizen in Rome. We ask ourselves, “Who is the audience for this poem?” Is Vergil attempting to teach farmers anything? Or is he only attempting to remind Roman soldiers, politicians, and social climbers of things about Nature they may have forgotten? What is the relationship between this poem and the Roman schools of Epicureanism and Stoicism? Finally, we consider the differences between Vergil’s relati...
2021-07-121h 10Key to All MythologiesEp. 18: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book XII (translated by Sarah Ruden)We arrive at the final book of Vergil’s epic. We consider the meaning of conquest and Roman identity, considering that it is the Trojans, not the Latins, whom Jove decrees will lose their language and identity, despite being the victors in battle. What is it about the synthesis of two losers – the Trojans, defeated by the Greeks, and the the Latins, defeated by the Trojans – which gives rise to the Romans? We continue to consider questions of synthesis. Vergil is attempting to synthesize so many strands of history, myth, tradition, politics, nature, and poetry, can it be any surpri...
2021-06-281h 09Key to All MythologiesEp. 17: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book XIWe spend a lot of our time in this episode discussing the beguiling character of Camilla, a fearsome warrior and virginal acolyte of the goddess Diana. Camilla is represented in Book XI as being a kind of Amazonian princess: primitive, noble, powerful, uncorrupted (shades of Rousseau and the “noble savage” to be sure). However, whatever her qualities, she is ultimately defeated by Aeneas and the Trojans, just like everything else in this poem that has opposed Roman destiny. The odd manner of her death – felled by an ignoble minor character who meets his own end soon after – provides us with man...
2021-06-211h 07Key to All MythologiesEp. 16: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book XBook X is the first book of the Aeneid where battle scenes dominate the narrative. As such, we consider the battlefield conduct of Aeneas in light of the questions we have been discussing throughout our reading of the whole poem. Does Aeneas display piety as he slaughters his enemies? Or, since his piety is always with him, perhaps it is better to ask, How does Aeneas display piety as he slaughters his enemies? How does Vergil adapt and alter the battlefield scenes from the Iliad, and what are these various adaptations meant to tell us? What to make of...
2021-06-1454 minKey to All MythologiesEp. 15: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book IXAt the center of Book IX is the night raid of Nisus and Euryalus. Modeled closely on the night raid of Odysseus and Diomedes in the Iliad, the raid here has less military justification and is less successful; yet upon their violent, predictable, and seemingly pointless deaths, Vergil praises Nisus and Euryalus in the highest terms. The meaning of this praise is the central question we discuss in this episode. Why is so much space devoted to the story of these two young, impetuous soldiers and lovers?
The first words we hear Nisus speak are “Do the go...
2021-06-071h 06Key to All MythologiesEp. 14: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book VIIIWe spend much of our time on this episode comparing and contrasting the shield that the maker god Vulcan (called Hephaestus in the Greek pantheon) forges for Aeneas with the one he previously forged for Achilles. The latter depicts general human scenes of sailing, fighting, dancing, and ritual, while the former depicts specific moments of Roman history and Roman triumph. What can these differences tell us about the differences between these cultures, and the differences between Roman culture and our own?
This leads us to ask a series of larger questions about the nature of Vergil’s ar...
2021-06-021h 08Key to All MythologiesEp. 13: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book VIINow that Aeneas and the Trojans have successfully landed in Italy, the narrative switches from one a journey to one of founding and colonizing. As such, Vergil switches from using the Odyssey as the text on which his own epic is structured to using the other great Homeric poet, the Iliad. This switch causes a new set of questions to take center stage. We begin by considering the use of the goddess Juno in Book VII. She has long been the Trojans’ antagonist, and here she again intervenes to try and bring them to ruin. She does so, however, wh...
2021-05-241h 00Key to All MythologiesEp. 12: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book VIOn this week’s episode we discuss Aeneas’ trip to the Dis, the underworld of Roman mythology. There seems to be something a bit obligatory about this trip. Like hosting funeral games, burying fallen warriors, and battling enemy champions, traveling to the underworld is just something epic heroes do in their poems. We consider again in what ways Aeneas is and is not like other epic heroes. Like his trip to the underworld, his position at the center of Vergil’s epic feels a bit obligatory. He does not stand apart from the crowd in the manner of Achilles. Aeneas...
2021-05-181h 02Key to All MythologiesEp. 11: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book V (translated by Sarah Ruden)On this episode we discuss the meaning of the funeral games Aeneas hosts to honor his father Anchises. The funeral games are a trope of Epic poetry, appearing in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and were obviously rituals of great importance to ancient peoples. We try to think about why this was. Is some quality of Aeneas’ leadership displayed here? Is there something distinctly “Roman” about these games, as compared to the games in those other Epics? We also consider the strange scene which ends this book, where the Trojan woman, left to mourn on the beach while the me...
2021-05-101h 07Key to All MythologiesEp. 10: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book IVOn this episode we discuss the doomed romance of Aeneas and Dido, and her subsequent tragic suicide. We continue to consider the major themes of this book – the destiny of Rome, Aeneas as a hero, fate and the gods, the conflict between Eros and the State, sources of meaning and order – as they relate to the very captivating and articulate character of Dido. Why is a woman-ruler (a fact which comes in for some heavy-handed, very Roman, stereotyped criticism) of a civilization fated to be destroyed by glorious Rome, who takes her own life in a seemingly meaningless melodramatic piqu...
2021-05-051h 03Key to All MythologiesEp. 9: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book IIIIn which we discuss the third book of the Aeneid. Book three has Aeneas relating the tale of the Trojans as they journey from the shores of burning Troy to their arrival at Carthage, where they are hospitably and warmly received by Dido, the Carthaginian queen. (As the next book will reveal, this hospitality will not ultimately be reciprocated by Aeneas, to say the least). Because this book follows the path of Odysseus’ journey in the Odyssey so closely, we spend much of our time comparing and contrasting these two journeys, giving particular attention to the very different encounters wi...
2021-05-051h 12Key to All MythologiesEp. 8: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book II (translated by Sarah Ruden)We continue to consider the essential questions posed by the Aeneid. Chief among them, perhaps, is an ancient question central to the epic tradition as a whole. What is the relationship between the individual and fate? Another way to say it: is the true hero acting in pursuit of their own glory, or are they carrying the weight of a family, a nation, even a destiny? Another way: can exemplary people stand against the direction of history, or is history driving human affairs, while single people – even the great ones – are merely stones swept before it? (If they can stan...
2021-05-051h 23Key to All MythologiesEp. 7: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book I (translated by Sarah Ruden)We begin our discussion of the Aeneid by considering the nature of Aeneas as a hero. Compared to the previous heroes of the epic tradition, such as Odysseus, Achilles, or Hector, Aeneas seems to lack some of their heroic excellences. Of course, Vergil is writing from a very different historical and cultural position – he is composing his poem many centuries further from the events of the Trojan war than the Odyssey and the Iliad were composed, and he writes from within the Roman empire at the moment of its greatest triumph. How does this change the nature of what Ve...
2021-05-051h 11Key to All MythologiesEp. 6: Bhagavad Gita, chapter nine through the endContinuing our discussion of the Bhagahvad Gita. We spend much of the episode trying to understand how the metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological claims of the Gita can be understood together, rather than as being fundamentally at odds. Is the proper interpretation of Krishna’s teachings dualist or monist? Each option seems to solve some puzzles while presenting us with new ones. How are we to think about a religious text which gives us a very thoroughgoing pantheist account of reality – all is one, the individual self is an illusion – while also containing specific, ethical guidelines for correct action, and promis...
2021-05-051h 21Key to All MythologiesEp. 5: Bhagavad Gita, chapters one through nineAs we are not, by any stretch, experts in the history or theology of Hinduism, we spend a fair bit of time just trying to find our footing in this beguiling and mysterious book. We discuss what to make of the seeming paradox that a text which encourages readers to abandon all attachments to the material world is also a dialogue taking place in a specific time and place, with a material and historical setting and, not only this, while encouraging non-attachment, also encourages direct, violent engagement with that concrete world. Is this a paradox? We discuss the ethical...
2021-05-041h 15Key to All MythologiesEp. 4: Book of Second Samuel, chapters one through 13On this episode we discuss the first half of 2nd Samuel, which chronicles David’s rise to power, his famous sin with Bathsheba, and the beginnings of the violence and strife within his family which will characterize the rest of his life. We spend most of the episode talking about David, Bathsheba, and her husband Uriah, whom David murders in order to try and hide his assignation with her. His assignation? Dalliance? Infidelity? Rape? Trying to understand the nature of the event, and the nature of David’s resulting guilt takes up a good bit of our energy here. As w...
2021-05-041h 08Key to All MythologiesEp. 3: The Book of First SamuelOn this episode we discuss “First Samuel,” the eighth book of the Old Testament. We mostly focus on the distinction between Saul and David. Why did the former fail to hold on to God’s blessing and establish himself as a successful king, while the latter succeeded? What does it say about the nature of God and God’s relationship to the Hebrew chosen people that they are allowed to have the king they are clamoring for even though God and the prophets clearly regard kings as a bad idea? Is the best way to approach the bible as theology...
2021-05-041h 15Key to All MythologiesEp. 2: Aristotle’s Poetics, Part IIWe begin by discussing whether Aristotle is attempting to explain how to write good poetry, or merely classifying what tragedians and other poets have done. What is the point of such classification, if not to help future poets write good poetry? We move from this to a discussion of his, surprisingly expansive, definition of metaphor. After a brief detour about the meaning of literary genius and its relationship to nature and public appreciation, we end by talking about Aristotle’s conclusion that tragedy is superior to epic.
2021-05-041h 30Key to All MythologiesEp. 1: Aristotle’s Poetics, Part IOn this episode of The Key to All Mythologies we discuss the first half of Aristotle’s Poetics, often considered the origin of literary criticism. In Aristotle’s case, this means considerations of tragic dramas and epic poetry, generally contrasted with history.
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